


Survivor

by themerrygentleman



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Trauma and aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5784697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themerrygentleman/pseuds/themerrygentleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Akuze, Andromeda Shepard looks back on her life and makes a promise to herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivor

If there was one thing Andromeda Shepard knew about life, it was that it never waited around until you were ready for it.

The brass had wasted no time getting her off of Akuze after the dust and the blood had settled from the massacre, and had stuck her in a featureless, generic Alliance base several relay jumps away. She wasn’t clear on exactly where she was—a lot of what other people were telling her went by in a haze lately, as if heard from somewhere far away. 

She didn’t get much of a chance to process things, anyway--she barely had time to catch a breath before being bombarded with requests for the real story of what had happened. She stopped keeping track of the names and faces early on. Interviews and official reports, it hardly mattered which was which—they all blurred into one endless procession of people shoving camera drones in her face, demanding to know how the hell she’d survived the thresher maws for so long. Apparently, she was the inspirational sob story of the week for the whole of the Systems Alliance. Not really how she’d pictured her fifteen minutes of fame.

Andy had taken a series of deep breaths, then given everyone what they needed to hear, polished and well-thought-out statements with plenty of respect for the tragedy that had occurred. Just like she’d been trained to do.

She kept it together for nearly a week.

Finally, she found a moment of privacy and escaped to her temporary quarters. She slumped down onto the floor, pressing her back up against the cold, unyielding metal of the locker they’d given her, and just collapsed, letting the ragged, gasping sobs rack her body at long last. Again and again she relived the moments that were seared into her memory, all of it jumbling and clashing together like a nightmare. The ground falling away and huge writhing shapes erupting out of it. Shattered armor and the taste of blood in her mouth. The staccato chorus of urgent shouts and gunfire all around her, losing its layers one by one until it was silenced, leaving nothing but thundering and screeching as the maws tore the colony apart. A bright flash as her last biotic shield failed. Sharp, desperate burning spreading through her body as she held her breath, willing herself not to move, not to be noticed, not to make one crucial misstep that would end her forever.

And before that, Mindoir burning, childhood landmarks charred and twisted into unrecognizable wrecks, neighbors and relatives marching in neat lines under the relentless four-eyed stares of batarian guards. Hiding and holding still there, too, eyes scanning the horizon for any chance to get away. Looking up past the columns of smoke to the flickering pinpoints of the stars, feeling her long-cherished dreams of getting offworld, to find a galaxy full of excitement and adventure, hardening into a more desperate hunger, a need to get out and never look back, to go somewhere, _anywhere_ that wasn’t here.

Time passed in distorted scraps, lived more in the past than in the present, until Andy felt wrung out and weightless, as blank as the walls of her tiny, prefabricated cabin. She sat in silence for a while, not thinking anything at all, just listening to herself breathing. The horror had passed over her like a storm, and although she knew it would be back later, it had left complete stillness in its wake.

Andy breathed out, breathed in, a steady, even sequence right out of the training manuals, then pulled herself to her feet. A momentary flicker of renewed alarm shot through her when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, but it was just her own reflection in the tiny, blurry mirror above the sink. For lack of anything else to do, she took a few steps closer and looked herself over.

She looked the part of someone who had just been through hell. Her gray eyes were rimmed with red from the crying, turning her always somewhat severe gaze into something truly intimidating. A long, wicked scar arched across her nose, still only halfway healed, adding to the unsettling impression. Aside from that one dark slash across her face, her complexion, usually a dark tan, looked inhumanly ashen. The longer Andromeda looked, the more she, herself, wanted to take a few cautious steps back from what was reflected in front of her.

_ Good.  _ She set her jaw and pulled herself up into a meticulously straight posture. _This is what a survivor should look like._

On a whim, she opened the locker and laid a hand on a plate of her battered armor, right next to the hard-won N7 insignia. The coolness and unyielding strength of the material was soothing, in a way, as she ran her hand over the old familiar canvas of scars that covered it.

She could be like this, she told herself. She could make herself steel, tempered and unbreakable and always ready for what the universe might throw at her, her scars only a testament to what she could survive. And as for what the armor was protecting—the wide-eyed colony girl deep down inside, the one who had looked up to the stars and dreamed long before Mindoir, before Akuze, her soul still alight with blazing hope and suffocating fear—she could stay inside, safe and hidden, until she was needed.

It was a big galaxy, after all. Maybe if Andy searched long enough, some day she would find a world where that colony girl could live, and breathe, and be safe, out in the open air.

She had all the time she needed. Life would go on as it always did, whether she wanted it to or not. And after all, she’d never drawn a distinction between running _away from_ and running _toward._ Either way you looked at it, it meant the same thing: that you could never, ever stop running.

**Author's Note:**

> Believe it or not, the fact that Andromeda Shepard shares a name with the next Mass Effect game is a complete coincidence. I created her a couple months before the title was announced, and it just happened to be the best space-themed female name I could think of at the time. At any rate, Andy is the first Shepard I've created who wasn't largely a self-insert, so I'm planning to write several fics exploring who she is as a character. And of course it's always worth it to spend more time in the Mass Effect universe! I hope you enjoyed this introduction to her.


End file.
